Pigments of the Past

The forbidden wing of the Imperial Archives smelled of forgotten things—dust with undertones of leather, iron, and the faint chemical tang of preservation spells. Elara's lantern cast trembling shadows across shelves crowded with artifacts officially labeled as "historically insignificant"—the Empire's bureaucratic euphemism for knowledge deemed too dangerous to circulate yet too valuable to destroy completely. Her forged permission slip had worked; the afternoon guard had barely glanced at the curator's mimicked signature before waving her through.

Now, alone among the discarded knowledge of a forgotten empire, her fingers hovered above the small landscape painting she'd uncovered beneath a stack of scholarly critiques. The academics had dismissed it as "amateur work without artistic merit," but they hadn't felt what she felt. The birthmark on her wrist—a pattern of scale-like whorls that had always seemed more scar than decoration—pulsed with unexpected warmth. It had first begun during that chance visit to the archives with Professor Marren, a whisper of sensation that had haunted her thoughts for weeks. Now, as her shadow fell across the canvas's weathered surface, the mark responded with unmistakable purpose, its edges illuminated by a silver-blue light barely visible in the dust-moted air.

Let it be here. Let me be right.

The canvas could have been unremarkable—a mountain valley rendered in faded pigments, large birds circling distant peaks, clouds gathering above forests that hadn't existed for two centuries. But the inscription along the weathered frame whispered otherwise: What eyes forget, pigments remember.

Elara drew a steadying breath and touched the painting.

Colors surged beneath her fingertips—not visibly, but sensually—as though the pigments recognized her. The scent of mountain air filled her lungs, crisp and tinged with pine. A keening cry echoed from somewhere beyond hearing, a sound no living creature had made in generations. The painted sky seemed suddenly deeper, the circling forms more defined against clouds that now suggested movement despite their stillness.

"Impossible," she whispered, but the birthmark on her wrist—the scale pattern that had marked her family for centuries—prickled in recognition.

She leaned closer, noting odd textures in the paint itself—areas that caught the lantern light differently, shimmering when viewed from certain angles. More concerning were the fine cracks spreading across the surface, paint flaking away along the edges as though surrendering to time before her eyes.

The painting was dying.

"What do you see in the landscape, Scholar Windthorn?" The voice behind her sent Elara's heart hammering against her ribs. She turned, one hand instinctively covering her birthmark, to find Curator Thovas watching her from between the shelves.

The elderly keeper of the archives stood with unexpected steadiness, his frail appearance belied by the sharpness in his gaze. In the lantern light, she caught the faintest shimmer along his jawline—a pattern of scales almost invisible against the paleness of age. Not a full birthmark like hers, but something similar, vestigial.

"What do you see," he repeated softly, moving closer, "when you look at those circling forms?"

Elara hesitated, caught between scholarly caution and the certainty pulsing through her veins. She traced the outline of one with her finger. "Wings," she whispered. "But not birds' wings. The anatomy is wrong—the joint structure, the proportion..." She met his gaze. "Drakes."

Something flickered in Thovas's eyes—relief perhaps. He moved closer, joints creaking like ancient bindings.

"This painting," he said, "came into the archives' possession after being confiscated from my own ancestor. A court painter named Maelis."

"Confiscated why?"

"Suspected sedition through art. An absurd charge, to modern sensibilities." His fingers hovered above the canvas without touching it. Before their eyes, a hairline crack spread across one drake form, erasing its wing from existence.

"It's failing," Elara whispered.

"After two centuries," Thovas replied, "even the strongest preservation spells reach their limits." He studied her birthmark with newfound intensity. "You're not the first scholar to find this painting, Windthorn. But you are the first to bear the caretaker birthmark since your grandmother."

Elara's hand slid firmer around her wrist. "My grandmother never mentioned—"

"Islaine Windthorn. She found this painting forty-three years ago. After her... experience with it, they confined her to Fallcrest Asylum for claiming to have communed with creatures erased from history." Thovas's eyes held genuine regret. "I was young then, too afraid to intervene."

Thovas checked his timepiece with a frown. "We should hurry. The night patrols have been irregular ever since the Eastern University incident."

"Whatever for? All that's here are old books and scrolls."

"Too many uncomfortable questions coming up on the centennial anniversary of the Memory Rebellions," Thovas replied grimly. "The dynasty wants to avoid a repeat."

Elara glanced nervously down the empty corridors. "May I continue examining it?"

Thovas gestured permission, then whispered, "Touch the mountain itself if you wish to know what the Empire wants forgotten."

Elara pressed her fingertips to the mountain at the painting's center. The archives dissolved around her as though washed away by sudden rain.

-----

Imperial soldiers in formation move through a mountain valley, weaponry unlike anything in historical records strapped across their backs. The devices resemble crossbows but with crystalline focusing chambers that pulse with suppression magic.

"They're just animals," Captain Varen reminds his troops, his voice carrying the crisp authority of unquestioned command. "Dangerous animals with abilities that threaten the necessary clarity of Imperial citizens.

Through Maelis's hidden vantage point, Elara watched as drakes descended, not in attack but in curious communion. Their scales shimmered with color-speech, a language of memory and emotion that passed between them in iridescent waves. Astonishment and terror mingled in her chest—Maelis's emotions preserved in the pigment for centuries.

The first shot struck a copper-green drake mid-flight. Instead of blood, an iridescent spray spilt from the wound—memories made visible as dissolving light. Maelis felt the severed connection as physical pain, the shared consciousness between her and the drake shattered.

The vision went black and raced forward.

Maelis moved through the carnage after the soldiers departed, gathering the fallen scales in a leather pouch. Copper-green, twilight-blue, sunrise-gold—each would yield different pigments, each carried different memories. Working by candlelight in a high tower room, Maelis ground the scales she harvested in secret, mixing them with binding agents of her own blood while whispering preservation spells.

"They cannot kill what they cannot find," Maelis whispers to the scales dissolving in her mortar. "I cannot save your bodies, but your memories will endure."

Through Maelis’s eyes, Elara glimpsed the creatures in their true form: majestic beings with iridescent scales that rippled with color when they communicated. Their communion with trusted humans happened through shared memory—images and emotions passed through scale-to-skin contact, entire histories preserved through generations, untarnished by any agenda.

The vision went black again and Elara found herself thrust to a new location.

In the Imperial Council chambers, an aging councilor remarks with chilling calculation: "People will still create, but without the emotional depth that breeds dissatisfaction with their station. They'll accept what records tell them rather than feeling ancestral truths in their blood. A more manageable populace."

----

Elara withdrew her hand with a gasp. Colors from the vision lingered behind her eyes, the copper-green scales of the first fallen drake matching the hue of her birthmark exactly.

"They weren't dangerous," Elara whispered. "They were inconvenient witnesses."

A drake form in the painting seemed to ripple, as though acknowledging her understanding before dissolving into nothingness.

"Memory made flesh," Thovas agreed. "When they shared connection with humans, we retained our own histories more vividly, felt more deeply. Tonight appears to be the painting's final hours of potency. Two centuries is remarkable persistence for organic material."

"Why show me if there's nothing to be done?"

Thovas's weathered fingers traced the frame inscription without touching the canvas itself. "Maelis encoded a reversal possibility. Using blood from a drake caretaker descendant—someone bearing the birthmark—she believed the stored memories could be released back into the world before they fade entirely."

Elara instinctively covered her marked wrist. "Released how?"

"The bearer becomes the vessel. The memories seek refuge in compatible flesh." Thovas's eyes held centuries of caution. "But the cost is significant. The process marks the carrier physically and mentally. Previous vessels have been hunted by the same forces that suppressed this knowledge for generations. Your perception will be permanently altered—you'll see truths others can't."

"Like my grandmother."

"She discovered the painting, understood its significance, but hesitated too long. By the time she attempted the ritual, her blood was rejected. The painting requires both the birthmark and absolute conviction." Thovas clasped his hands to hide their trembling. "Her subsequent claims about drake communion led to confinement."

The sound of approaching footsteps echoed from distant shelves.

"The patrols," Thovas whispered. "We must hide the painting, quickly."

Thovas slid the painting behind a shelf of moldering astronomical charts as the patrol's lantern light swept through adjacent aisles. Finally the patrol itself appeared—two standard Imperial blues, but led by a figure in the distinguished trim of a Truthkeeper lieutenant. Thovas stiffened slightly at the sight. Elara recognized the danger immediately: not a routine patrol, but a targeted inspection.

The younger guard paused, sniffing the air. "Do you smell something odd? Like... mountain air?"

"The ventilation in these old sections is unpredictable," Thovas replied smoothly. "Drafts from the upper levels often carry scents from the gardens."

The Truthkeeper stepped forward, his insignia catching the lantern light. "Curator Thovas. Unexpected to find you conducting research at this hour."

"The midnight inventory waits for no one, Lieutenant Dresh. So much so that Scholar Windthorn is even assisting me with the taxonomical classifications."

Inside Elara's mind, a fragment of drake memory surfaced unbidden—a high mountain nest, wind-polished stones arranged in patterns that matched the birthmark on her wrist. She stifled a gasp, struggling to remain present.

"Your companion seems unwell," Dresh observed, stepping closer.

"The dust," Elara managed, lifting her hand to cover a false cough. The movement exposed her wrist fully, and Dresh's eyes narrowed.

"That marking—"

"A simple birthmark," Thovas interrupted. "Common among those from the northern provinces."

Dresh leaned closer, studying first her wrist, then her eyes. "Three marked scholars were detained last month in the Eastern University," he said. "Spreading dangerous tales and nonsense."

Inside Elara's mind, a memory surfaced with startling clarity—Captain Varen, the officer who had led the drake extermination, his face overlayed over Dresh, the familial resemblance unmistakable.

"We've discovered similar markings in northern tribal art," Elara said, falling back on her academic training. "Symbolizing connection to ancestral wisdom. My research suggests they were common decorative motifs before standardized Imperial iconography."

Dresh's expression tightened with suspicion, but academic disputes fell outside his jurisdiction. "The empire values accurate history," he repeated.

A moment of tension stretched between them.

Finally, Dresh stepped back. "Ensure she signs out properly upon departure. And perhaps suggest a medical examination. Northern birthmarks sometimes indicate... hereditary conditions."

"Naturally," Thovas agreed, the perfect model of administrative compliance.

Only when they had gone did he retrieve the painting, wincing at its condition. Entire sections had faded to blank canvas, memories literally disappearing before their eyes. The mountain peak remained, barely, as did fragments of a single drake form.

"Seven scholars discovered this painting over the two centuries. Most were convinced to abandon their inquiries. Those who persisted..." He didn't finish the thought. "Your grandmother was different. She bore the birthmark, felt the connection immediately. But by the time she attempted the ritual, something had changed in her. Hesitation. Fear."

"I visited her in the asylum as a child," Elara said. "She would trace patterns in the air—drake-flight formations. The doctors said it was meaningless compulsion, but she was drawing what she'd seen here."

The painting's deterioration had accelerated, pigments separating from canvas in minute flakes that drifted like ash between them.

"After tonight, it will appear completely ordinary," Thovas said. "Just another amateur landscape, all magic spent. The last physical evidence of drake communion will be gone."

The midnight bells tolled across the Imperial City. Elara felt each resonance like a question demanding answer. Her grandmother had hesitated. The Empire had built itself on strategic forgetting. How many generations had passed with truth fading like pigment exposed too long to light?

"The drakes weren't perfect," Thovas said softly. "Their memory-sharing could cause chaos when spread unchecked. The Empire had legitimate reasons to fear their influence—but they didn't deserve extinction, and their memory doesn't deserve erasure."

Elara removed a small silver knife from her research pouch—a tool normally used for scraping samples or cutting binding threads. The birthmark on her wrist seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, scales catching lantern light in patterns too deliberate for coincidence.

My grandmother hesitated too long. I will not.

"What's the activation phrase?" she asked.

Relief and fear crossed Thovas's face. "From your vision—what Maelis whispered to the scales."

Elara nodded, understanding. She pressed the blade to her birthmark, drawing it across the scale pattern with scholar's precision. Blood welled, startlingly bright against her skin.

"They cannot kill what they cannot find," she whispered, pressing her bleeding wrist to the painting's surface.

For one terrible moment, nothing happened. Then the blood spread across the canvas like water soaking parchment, seeking the remaining pigments with unnatural purpose. Colors long faded suddenly revivified—copper-green, twilight-blue, sunrise-gold—shimmering with impossible brilliance. The drake-form took shape with clarity that defied the painting's age, its scales rippling with color-speech that Elara somehow understood without seeing.

We remember. We endure. We return.

Canvas fibers dissolved into luminescent mist, pigments releasing their long-preserved essence. The mist carried the scent of mountain storms and sunlit scales, tasting of copper and salt as it swirled around her before sinking inward. Memory not her own flashed behind her eyes—flight-joy, communion-song, the sensation of wind beneath wings that were not hers. Pain lanced through her birthmark as the pattern began to shift beneath her skin, scales catching lantern light in ripples of copper-green.

The wooden frame clattered empty to the floor. Elara gasped as a sudden memory surged through her mind—not her own, but from the scales themselves. She saw Thovas, decades younger, his face less lined but bearing the same determination. In this very archive, a small girl with her wrist marked like Elara's reached toward the painting while Thovas whispered encouragement. Approaching footsteps had forced him to snatch the child away, hiding her behind shelves as Imperial guards swept through with detection instruments.

"You tried," Elara whispered. "Years ago. With my mother."

Thovas's face revealed nothing, but a subtle ripple passed beneath the faint scale pattern along his jawline—a vestigial response that only drake-memory let her recognize.

"Your mother bore the mark more prominently than even you," he said, voice barely audible. "The drakes chose her first. But the Truthkeepers were patrolling that night." His fingers traced the empty frame. "I was a coward. I never tried again. When your grandmother found the painting years later, I remained silent. And I never could bring myself to become the vessel."

====

Two weeks later, in the crowded main hall of the Imperial University Library, Elara sat across from a junior scholar reviewing his thesis on border province folklore. Her birthmark remained hidden beneath long sleeves, though in certain light, faint iridescence shimmered along her jawline.

The young scholar frowned at a passage in his own work. "The Imperial histories mention nothing about communal memory rituals in northern provinces, yet local folk tales refer to them constantly. It's as though an entire tradition was simply... removed from record."

When he handed her his manuscript, their fingers brushed. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat—but it was enough for Elara to pass a fragment of drake memory: a king's confession about sanctioned historical revisions, ordered after the Memory Rebellions along with a subtle nudge of corroborating texts.

The scholar paused, momentarily disoriented. "That's strange... I just had the oddest thought about the historical revisions following the northern campaigns."

"Perhaps you should explore that line of inquiry," Elara suggested. "The Imperial Archives have a fascinating collection of landscape paintings from that era. Art often preserves what official records omit."

As the young man gathered his notes, Elara felt the drake memories shift inside her, some rising closer to the surface, others submerging deeper. Not all would be shared—some truths were too dangerous, others too complex for immediate understanding. But the communion had begun again.

Along her wrist, the birthmark began to slowly expand the scales shimmering with color-speech—copper-green, twilight-blue, sunrise-gold—the first human to speak drake-truth in two centuries. The burden of memory pressed heavy against her consciousness, and with it came the unnerving certainty that somewhere in the Imperial Palace, records were already being prepared for agents tasked with finding those bearing suspicious birthmarks.

"Some histories are written in books," she whispered as the scholar departed, "but the truest ones live in memory that refuses to die."